Carmel preparations for winter storms have paid off

California’s drought has weakened trees across the Central Coast, which makes it much easier for them to come toppling down during stormy winters. However, one local city’s preparation has paid off.

Lining the streets of Carmel are large Monterey pine trees, upwards of 10,000 of them. City Forester Mike Branson has been with Carmel for 35 years and because of his work to keep the city prepared this winter, the mess from El Nino was nowhere near as big as years past.

“You have to kind of look at your forest and say, what is going to be our biggest problem, and how are we going to address that problem,” said Branson.

Their biggest problem was dead, drought stricken trees. Branson and public works crews identified more than 60 dead trees and cut them down ahead of time.

“A large tree if it fails, if it falls over or uproots, can affect not just one property but here in Carmel it can affect several properties,” said Branson.

But that wasn’t the case this past winter, according to Branson only about 10 trees came down during winter storms, causing minor damage.

Along the Central Coast, drought stricken trees are found in several pockets, especially areas that are more densely populated with trees. However, elsewhere around the state the amount of tree mortalities due to the drought is much higher.

According to CalFire, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains there are miles and miles of dead trees. Trees that have been weakened by the drought and attacked by insects and disease. But trees along the Central Coast are a bit healthier compared to the rest of the state because of recent rain.

“We’ve been seeing relatively low mortality, just a few trees here and there in the stands so thankfully we’ve been able to get through this without too much extensive damage,” said Jonathan Pangburn with CalFire.

Extensive damage that Carmel safely avoided. Now to help rebuild, the city is planning to plant about 200 trees by the end of 2016.